THE MADMAN ON THE THRONE

Caligula

[77]

I

F it were a law of nature that a son inherits the
virtues of his parents, Rome would have had the best of
rulers in the young man who, in his twenty-sixth year,
succeeded to the throne of Tiberius.
Caligula
was the youngest son of Germanicus and
[78] Agrippina. On Germanicus Suetonius bestows the
comprehensive praise that he had all bodily and mental
virtues, and these in such degree as no man had ever
possessed before or since. Agrippina, though she lacked
the gentler virtues of her husband, was a Roman matron
of the noblest type. Much was hoped from the son of
such parents, but never were hopes more cruelly
falsified. The old emperor, indeed, with whom it was
the young Caligula's misfortune to live, saw deeper
into his nature, and had no illusions. "This lad," he
would often say, "will be the death of me and many
more." In fact he was a madman, and had all a madman's
cunning. In his heart he hated the old emperor,
but he kept this hatred a profound secret. So
invariably respectful and obedient was he, that it was
well said of him, "Never was there a better slave or a
worse master."

For the first few months of his reign, he seemed to be
all that could be wished. The exiles of the late
[79] reign were recalled, and general amnesty proclaimed.
The trade of the informer was declared to be at an end.
Books proscribed by the jealous tyranny of Tiberius
were again permitted to be sold. In short the young
emperor seemed determined to "crown the edifice of
liberty." "So far," says the historian of the Caesars,
"I have been speaking of a ruler; now I have to speak
of a monster."

In the front of his offences comes, curiously enough,
the insane desire, as a Roman thought it, to be a
crowned king. Some of the tributary monarchs, who were
protected by Rome, were visiting the city, and he was
jealous of their diadems, for was he not the King of
Kings? His courtiers prevailed upon him to forego what
would have been a fatal offence to the people, always
ready to be slaves, so that their master was not a
king. He was too great for a crown, they told him; and
he turned his thoughts to claiming the honours of
godhead. He took his place as a third with the twin
brethren Castor and Pollux. He consecrated a temple to
his own divinity, founded a college of priests, and set
up a statue of gold, which was always covered with the
same garments that he himself wore. With Jupiter he
claimed the equality of familiar intercourse. He held
private conferences with the great deity of the
capitol, the head of the Roman Pantheon, whispering in
the ear of the statue, and listening in his turn, and
some- [80] times breaking into loud threats. "Slay me, or I slay you,"
he was once heard to say.

If gods fared thus at his hands, it may be imagined
that men did not escape. Aged senators, who had filled
the highest offices of State, were compelled to run at
his side for miles, or stand, napkin in hand, while he
dined. Rome seems to have been always very tolerant of
these indignities to the nobles. It was a new and
audacious experiment on its patience, when he shut up
the granaries, and brought all the city to the verge of
famine. In audacity, indeed, he was never wanting. It
seems to have been rather by way of a practical
witticism than of a measure of precaution that he
ordered a general massacre of the exiles. "What were
your thoughts while you were in your island?"
he asked of one who had come back from exile after the
death of Tiberius. "I always prayed to the gods that
Tiberius might die, and you come to the throne." "That
is exactly what the exiles are doing now," he replied,
and he sent round the executioner.

After these atrocities, which, indeed, are only a few
out of the dismal catalogue of Suetonius, it is relief
to turn to more harmless eccentricities. He thought of
destroying all the copies of Homer. "Plato," he said,
"banished him from his
common- [81] wealth; why should not I do the same?" Virgil and Livy came
under his censure, and he was very nearly expelling
their writings and their busts from the libraries.
Virgil he thought to be without genius and learning;
Livy was a crude and careless historian. His one
campaign, albeit it had the merit of being bloodless,
was one of his maddest acts. He marched against
Britain, which, since the day of Julius Caesar, had been
left to itself, winning a victory over the Germans on
his way.

The enemy indeed was a sham, a handful of prisoners
dressed up for the purpose, whom he was summoned from
his mid-day meal, with a great show of alarm, to drive
back from the camp. He returned after routing a host
which did not exist, loaded his companions with
honours, blamed the cowardice of those who had stayed
behind, and censured in an angry despatch the
carelessness of those who were living at ease in Rome,
while their Emperor was imperilling his life. Britain
he never saw. But he drew up his army in array, and
with all the engines of war in their places, on the
opposite coast. No one could imagine what was his
purpose, when suddenly he bade the soldiers fill their
helmets and their pockets with shells. "Spoils of
ocean," he
[82] called them, destined for the capitol and the palace.
It was possibly in a lucid moment that he ordered a
light-house to be built on the spot.

For such a prodigy of cruelty and folly it is hard to
feel anything but abhorrence. Yet it moves one's pity
to know that the creature was conscious of his own
frenzy, and sometimes thought of going into retirement
and submitting to some treatment. Of course there is
the common story of how his wife Caesonia gave him a
love-potion which made him mad;
but the historian's account of the matter is
sufficient. "He was chiefly troubled by a want of
sleep. He never rested for more than three hours in the
night. Even then his sleep was not undisturbed. He was
visited by terrible dreams. Accordingly he was wont,
wearied as he was of lying so long awake, sometimes to
sit upon his bed, sometimes to wander up and down the
long corridors of the palace, praying and longing for
the dawn."

Cæsonia gave him a love-potion.

After all, it was not the public indignation but
private vengeance that brought him to his end. His own
household feared and hated him, and no one more so than
one Cassius Chærea, a tribune of the Praetorian guard,
whom he took every opportunity of insulting. He had
risen from his bed after noon-day, for he was
indisposed by the excesses of the previous day. He
hesitated about leaving his chamber,
[83] but his attendants, who, doubtless, were in the plot,
urged him to go. He had to pass through an underground
chamber, where some boys were rehearsing a spectacle
that was in preparation. As he was speaking to them,
Chærea struck him on the neck with his sword, crying, "Take
this!" Another conspirator dealt him a blow on the
breast. He fell on the ground, and huddling his limbs
together, tried to shelter himself from the blows,
crying out all the time, I am alive, I am alive.
Ninety wounds were found afterwards on his corpse. When
it was too late, his German bodyguard hurried up. They
could do nothing but kill some of the assassins.

Such a story only wants one horror to complete it. The
body was hurriedly placed on the funeral pile, and
buried when half-burnt in the gardens of Lamiae. The
keepers of the place were disturbed by the spirit of
the dead (so Suetonius tells us, as if it were a
well-known fact), till his sisters, whom he had
banished, returned and paid the last honour to his
remains in a more seemly fashion. And in his palace,
too, till it was burnt to the ground, not a night
passed without some terrible sight.

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